From NYTimes.com: In theory, a criminal-law doctrine known as the exclusionary rule
forbids prosecutors from using evidence obtained by the police as the
result of an improper search. In practice, the rule has significant
exceptions, like for evidence obtained in good faith through reliance
on an invalid search warrant or as the result of erroneous information
from a court official.

Justices on the current Supreme Court
have made no secret of their desire to carve more exceptions out of the
nearly 100-year-old exclusionary rule. On Tuesday, the court accepted a
new case that could provide a route toward that goal.

The
question in the case is whether the list of exceptions should be
expanded to include evidence obtained from a search undertaken by
officers relying on a careless record-keeping error by the police.

In
this instance, officers in Coffee County, Ala., arrested a man, Bennie
Dean Herring, in 2004 after being informed by the Sheriff’s Department
in neighboring Dale County that he was the subject of an outstanding
warrant. But the warrant, although still in Dale County’s computerized
database, had in fact been withdrawn five months earlier. In the 10 or
15 minutes it took for the Dale County officers to realize their error,
the Coffee County officers had already stopped Mr. Herring, handcuffed
him, and searched him and his truck, finding methamphetamine and an
unloaded pistol.